“If the reaction is accompanied by lace-wing flies, dermolina juice and a little crushed frozen pomegranate, the potion neutralizes, making it less dangerous to the half-formed werewolf. Then, if you add some mandrake roots, which are very hard to come buy, might I add, the potion solidifies and you get a balbasser stone. Simple!” I heard Faithby’s voice reel off. I looked up to see her and Laura looking down at me sympathetically. I glanced at Laura and we shared a look, trying not to laugh.

I love my friends. I went off into my own little world, they were having a conversation and I was just thinking about how much I truly love them. What wonderful-

“How many times do I have to tell you lot?! NO TALKING IN THE LIBRARY!” Madam Pince interrupted my lovely thoughts. She shouted quite loudly, too, which is quite contradictory, seeing as she’s always telling us to be quiet. Also, she’s really old and can’t hear properly so it was even louder. You get me.

Faithby and Laura scurried off, and with one last glare at me and Oliver, Madam Pince hurried off (as fast as someone of that age can hurry) to pry on some other people’s conversations. “You need to understand this, Crisia, it will definitely come up in NEWTs.” Oliver said to me sternly in hushed tones, looking around surreptitiously in case the hag was still listening.

“Newts, newts, newts!” I whisper-shouted, sounding like some crazy owl-obsessed person. “I hate newts! Why do we have to do them? I want to be smart like you. Twangerino...”

“One: you are clever, you just suck at listening in potions, two: can you stop calling NEWTs ‘newts’, please? It gets confusing.”

“I think we are done here, my firm friend.” I concluded. That could have been ambiguous, too, because he’s a boy, and he has a firm friend sometimes. Titter, titter. I do make myself laugh. He didn’t get it though.

We were walking up the corridor to the common room, tired and talking about deer, when someone came out from behind a tapestry (probably a concealed corridor behind there, aye?) and jumped onto us both. It wasn’t very hard to knock us over, seeing as I’m the size of a dwarf, and Twang is, well, skinny as a rake and a bit of a weed. I sat up and looked at our attacker. It was James Potter. He’s a seventh year and quite hunky dory, but really weird and a bit of an annoyance, as you would gather from the whole ‘knocking me and Oliver over when we were tired and after a hard study session almost past curfew’ thing.

“James Potter! Did your father teach you anything about manners or was he too tired after WWII?!” (the wiz war, not the world war... duh). “That was a low blow, Lovegood. Peace be with you” he said solemnly, but with flashy eyes. And with that, he ran off. I helped up Oliver because he’s my potions tutor and my firm friend and we had to quickly hurry to the common room or else we would die. Well, not die, but we would be punished for being out of bed. And that wouldn’t do because on Sundays you need your rest.

Monday morning, oh joy to everyone! Mondays are my least favourite day of the week, closely followed my Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. This particular Monday I had to wake up early because it was only the second week of school and it wouldn’t really do me good to be late this early in term. Once you’ve passed Christmas, you can begin setting your alarm later and later until the summer when no one really cares if you come into third lesson out of breath but beautiful claiming a hippogriff ate your alarm clock. It’s quite funny because I did that last year and Binns didn’t even notice.

Anyway, this is what I was thinking; ‘oh no, oh no! Don’t be late to breakfast darling!” I was thinking this to myself, I often call myself darling, or babes, or sweetheart. I’m not so weird. I managed to get down to breakfast fairly speedily, because I had packed my bag the night before, clever me. I sat down next to Laura, and, to my dismay, she was talking about Fred Weasley. Laura is obsessed with Fred Weasley. He’s the Potters’ cousin I think (their family is very confusing) and has red hair and is quite nice but humorous at the same time, and is named after a dead bloke who was his uncle and his dad has one ear. He’s quite interesting. “And he told me a joke! It was the funniest joke, you know, about a…” Yes, I did not want to know. I glanced over at Oliver and Faith-Beatrice, who were both nodding politely and smiling, but I could tell by the glazed-over look in their eyes they were clearly not listening. Oliver was clearly thinking about…well… what boys think about. Faithby was probably thinking about writing essays or how she can make her hair shinier and I was just… thinking.

Fred was in the same year as James who was his maternal cousin… who was one year above Albus, who was… 2 or 3 years above Lily Potter? I don’t know.. this gets far too confusing. I’m going to get Al to make me a Potter/Weasley/Delacour/Jordan/Clearwater/whoever else family tree.

I zoned back just in time to hear Laura saying oh-so-joyfully, “Isn’t that great?! Things are moving on, fellows!” Oh, Laura, despite your amazing mind and huge breasts and squeaky little voice and funny lips and tendency to drink a bit too much, you are clueless.

We all heard a rather pronounced and mirthful shout of laughter from the doors to the hall. We all looked and we saw James and Al running towards us (Al, kind of skipping, he was the more effeminate one) looking excited and mischievous. To my utter alarm, they stopped right in front of us and looked into my face.

“You’re in the boys’ toilets on the fifth floor” James grinned manically.

“No, dear, I believe I am in the great hall eating breakfast” I replied slowly, because he was a bit silly.

“’Crisia Lovegood, although being weird and talking strange, is the most beautiful creature on earth. I love her and I want her to be mine. I would certainly tap that.’ And below that it says ‘I second that’ and ‘hear, hear’ and in smaller writing it says ‘I wonder who this is except Zabini, you dirty foul prick, you’re disgusting.’

I didn’t know you were so wanted Christopher!!” James added.

I just looked at him. I was agog. My mouth was agape, and my mind was… a-whirring. Ew. I didn’t actually think people actually wrote things in toilets. That’s a bit gross.

I heard Oliver giggle. “I wrote that last one! That’s funny.” I wouldn’t exactly call that funny. But hmmmm… 2 people other than Zabini have agreed with that and... wowza that means I am wanted! I would be happy if I wasn’t so disgusted.

“That’s yucky” I finished the conversation a bit childishly, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

In potions, we had a cover lesson because Professor Ileana was away for some reason. And guess who covered? BINNS. Hardihar. That meant that I was alone in potions, sitting by myself, and I had nothing to do but listen to his lecture on amortenia. ‘Zing!’ I thought to myself as a light bulb flashed above my head, ‘I can make a list of potential boyfriends!’ So while it looked like I was taking notes, I was infact thinking really hard on whom I wouldn’t really mind going out with.

Right so first… Robert Boot’s quite nice looking, although he’s a Ravenclaw, so Granddad X would make him marry me or bore him with tiaras etc etc etc.

In the end, this was the list I came up with, and I was quite happy with it.

4. Scorpius Malfoy yummy yum. He is GORGEOUS. He’s a Gryffindor but wouldn’t go out with me because… well he just wouldn’t. He’s in my year too, and we have Astronomy together. I think he fancies Rose Weasley anyway…sigh.

5. Thomas Flint. He’s a Slytherin, but what does that matter nowadays? He gave me a book I forgot to take from the library once... hunky.

I showed this to Laura once we got out of potions and she looked immensely relieved to see that Fred Weasley wasn’t on it. Bless her.

I was sitting on my bed in the dormitory, trying to do my charms homework, but finding it quite hard since all the girls in my dorm were having a noisy pillow fight. I couldn’t go and do it in the common room because then all of the duelling and swearing and games of dares would distract me. It gets worse every year.

Tap tap tap.

Gosh, they’re even making tapping noises now.

Tap tap tap.

I looked up and saw an owl at the window. Laura had apparently seen it, too, because she was tripping over her pyjama bottoms to get to the window. I could tell she thought it would be from Fred. What a dear. She gaped a gape that was not a good gape. I went over to her, but no one else did because they were still roughly banging each other on the heads with pillows. She handed me the piece of parchment without a word.

It was my potential boyfriends list.

Phew. No worries then. Someone returned it to me. I was getting worried it would be lost.

Oh, but then I noticed the words in colour-changing ink at the bottom.

I have published this.

What a week this is turning out to be.

If I’ve got the whole Weasley/Potter family thing wrong, please tell me because I am confused to no end!

Review and tell me what you think.

I was shocked to see that a mere 3 of you reviewed last chapter. And it had 40 reads up to now (24th November) which is quite appalling. If you read, please please review or else I will cut off my ears or make something dreadful happen in this story or set a ghost on you. Beware.